1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to material disintegration techniques, and more particularly, to a high frequency disintegrator for extracting materials.
2. Description of Related Art
Ultrasonic technology is well known in the art for the following applications: medical ultrasonography, ultrasonic motion drive, ultrasonic probing, ultrasonic signal detection, and ultrasound for industrial processing. Technically, ultrasounds are sounds that cannot be heard by the human ear, and they generate a physical vibration that is transmitted through a medium. For ultrasound in a fluid, cavitation is created in the fluid by highly intensive ultrasonic waves. Such cavitation generates small vacuum bubbles having a diameter of approximately one-ten-thousandth centimeter, and these small vacuum bubbles, when being broken, are able to locally generate a pressure of 1,000 atm, which in turn creates a strong impact to wash away dirt or hit cell walls of cells in materials, thereby releasing contents (or lysate) of cells when the cell walls are broken.
Referring to FIG. 1, a conventional ultrasonic disintegrator 1 is illustrated. The ultrasonic disintegrator 1 includes an ultrasonic device 11, a vibration head 12 connected to the ultrasonic device 11, a containing device 13, and a stirring device 14. The ultrasonic device 11 is installed at the center of the containing device 13. The vibration head 12 has a piezoelectric material (e.g. piezoelectric blade) therein through which a piezoelectric effect is generated, thereby creating high frequency vibration. Besides, the containing device 13 contains a medium and a material (such as a solid) therein. The medium can be a fluid medium for transferring high frequency vibration energy, for example, a fluid based on a liquid (such as water). The stirring device 14 is installed inside the containing device 13, for continuously stirring the medium and the material.
Through the use of the ultrasonic disintegrator 1, during material disintegration in practice, vibration of the vibration head 12 transfers the high frequency vibration energy to the containing device 13, allowing a plurality of small vacuum bubbles to be generated by cavitation in the medium surrounding the vibration head 12. And, an impact created when the small vacuum bubbles are broken is used to disintegrate the material, thereby accomplishing the result of material disintegration.
However, by the aforementioned conventional technique, as the ultrasonic device 11 and the vibration head 12 are located at the center of the containing device 13, the vibration head 22 transfers the high frequency vibration energy downward, and thus the generated high frequency vibration energy tends to be easily concentrated at the center and gradually decreased toward the periphery of the containing device 13. As such, the material situated at the periphery of the containing device 13 cannot be effectively disintegrated as expected due to insufficient vibration energy, thereby leading to uneven disintegration. Moreover, due to such unevenness, the medium and the material must be repeatedly stirred. Even so, it is difficult to confirm whether the desired evenness is reached or not, while the amount of disintegrated material obtained is limited even after a long period of time of operation. Hence, the above conventional technique is only applicable for laboratory-scale use but not for large-scale use.
Moreover, the containing device 13 of the conventional ultrasonic disintegrator 1 is nearly sealed. When the high frequency vibration energy continues to disintegrate material in the containing device 13, a large amount of heat is generated, thereby increasing the temperature of the medium. When this happens, the disintegration process must be terminated and an additional temperature-cooling step should be performed to prevent the medium from being overheated, so as not to affect stability and integrity of the properties of the disintegrated material. In particular, when disintegrating a material such as Chinese herbal medicine, natural organic product, etc, a high temperature usually destroys the structure of the cell contents or lysate of the material to be extracted.
In other words, even if the aforementioned conventional technique may disintegrate the material into powder particles, it is not able to carry out an extraction process. And, the amount of material that can be disintegrated one time is limited, such that the conventional technique is not suitable for large-scale use.
As shown in FIG. 2, the Taiwanese Patent Application No. 093119250 discloses another conventional ultrasonic disintegrator 2. The ultrasonic disintegrator 2 includes an ultrasonic device 21, a vibration head 22 connected to the ultrasonic device 21, and a suspension carrier device 23 connected to the vibration head 22. The vibration head 22 has a piezoelectric material. The suspension carrier device 23 includes a transmission tube 231 connected to the vibration head 22, a transmission pump 232 connected to the transmission tube 231, and a cooler 233 connected to the transmission tube 231, thereby using the transmission pump 232 to control the flow speed, and allowing the material and the medium to flow in the transmission tube 231, for disintegration.
However, the suspension carrier device 23 of the conventional ultrasonic disintegrator 2 is nearly sealed. Even if the cooler 233 is installed in the suspension carrier device 23, because the cooler 233 is inside the suspension carrier device 23, when the ultrasonic device 21 continues to operate and the internal temperature of the suspension carrier device 23 keeps rising, the temperature-cooling effect of the cooler 233 cannot compensate for the temperature rise of the medium in the suspension carrier device 23, that is, the cooler 233 is unable to prevent the medium temperature from rising, thereby causing the material to block the transmission tube 231. Hence, just like the above conventional technique using the ultrasonic disintegrator 1, the medium temperature is increased during the operation of the ultrasonic disintegrator 2 and the disintegration process must then be terminated so as to allow an additional temperature-cooling step to be performed to prevent the medium from being overheated and avoid affecting the material and the disintegrated powder particles. This however undesirably elongates the processing time.
Furthermore, in order to be connected to the vibration head, the transmission tube 231 of this ultrasonic disintegrator 2 must have a size greater than that of the vibration head 22, and accordingly, the vibration head 22 has relatively less functional unit area and shorter functional time. In order to achieve evenness, the material must be continuously circulated. However, as the vibration head 22 transfers the high frequency vibration energy downward, if the material circulated by such an ultrasonic disintegrator 2 is located on the sidewall of the transmission tube 231, it may not receive sufficient vibration energy and then the expected disintegrating effect cannot be achieved. Even if the material is located right at the center of the transmission tube 231, effective disintegration cannot be achieved as well due to short-time operation applied to the material being continuously circulated. As a result, even if the material is continuously circulated, it cannot ensure that effective disintegration of all the material is accomplished.
Although the above ultrasonic disintegrator may disintegrate the material into nano-scale powder particles, it fails to effectively control the temperature therein and has limited operational/functional location and time, and it may destroy the structure of contents (or lysate) of the material and is not applicable for effective disintegration and extraction. Thereby, the above ultrasonic disintegrator is not suitable for large-scale use.
In addition, the aforementioned two conventional ultrasonic disintegrators are each a single and independent apparatus. When massive amount of material disintegration is required, a considerable number of associated devices/equipment must be simultaneously utilized. Hence, if the conventional techniques are applied in large-scale use, the manufacturing cost is certainly increased.
Therefore, the problem to be solved here is to develop a material disintegration technique, which provides even disintegration and constant temperature control and is applicable for large-scale use, so as to overcome the drawbacks of the above conventional techniques.